Happy UFO day

On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted a series of unidentified flying objects near Washington's Mt. Rainier. It was the first widely reported UFO sighting in the United States, and, Arnold's description of what he saw led the press to coin the term flying saucer.

Flying Saucer

Arnold was an experienced pilot, with more than 9,000 hours of flying time. He had diverted from his flight plan -- Chehalis to Yakima, Washington -- to search for a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane reported down in the Cascades near the southwest slope of Mt. Rainier. The afternoon was crystal clear and he was cruising at an altitude of 9,200 feet. A minute or two after noting a DC-4 about 15 miles behind and to the left of him, he was startled by something bright reflecting off his plane. At first he thought he had nearly hit another aircraft but as he looked off in the direction the light had come from, he saw nine "peculiar-looking" aircraft flying rapidly in formation toward Mt. Rainier.

As the strange, tailless craft flew between his plane and Mt. Rainier and then off toward distant Mt. Adams, Arnold noted their remarkable speed -- he later calculated that they were moving at around 1,700 mph -- and said he got a pretty good look at their black silhouettes outlined against Rainier's snowy peak. He later described them as saucer-like disks. At the time, he assumed they were some kind of experimental military aircraft. If they were, nobody in the War Department (soon to be merged into the Department of Defense) was saying. In fact, the official Army Air Corps position was that Arnold had either seen a mirage or was hallucinating. He insisted he was perfectly alert and lucid, and he invited both the Army and the FBI to investigate. The Army sent a couple of officers out to talk with Arnold. Even though they concluded that "a man of [his] character and apparent integrity" almost certainly saw what he claimed to have seen, the Army's initial verdict – that Arnold had seen a mirage - still remains unchanged.

Crashed saucer, Roswell

The most famous flying saucer - Roswell, N.M.

During the first week of July 1947, rancher William "Mack" Brazel discovered a large amount of unusual debris scattered widely over his ranch about 75 miles northwest of Roswell. Neighbors told him he should go to Roswell to report his find. Brazel informed the local sheriff in Roswell, George M. Wilcox, that he may have found a "flying disk" and Wilcox then contacted the local USAAF airbase in Roswell. The base commander, Colonel William Blanchard, sent his head Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel, with the head of the Roswell Army Counterintelligence Corps, Sheridan Cavitt, to investigate. Marcel and Cavitt went with Brazel to his ranch, retrieved some of the debris and returned with it to the Roswell base on the evening of July 7. Some debris was later flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, home of the USAF's aeronautical research labs.

The next afternoon, July 8, Col. Blanchard issued an official USAAF press release from Roswell reporting that a "flying disk" had been found "sometime last week" by a local rancher and that it had been recovered by the Intelligence Office at the base for transfer to "higher headquarters". United Press also reported that residents near the ranch saw "a strange blue light several days ago about 3 a.m." The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) announced that the Field had come into possession of a flying saucer.

However, on July 9, the army changed its story and stated that the disk was really a harmless high-altitude weather balloon. Bodies found at the crash site were claimed to be experimental dummies or hallucinations brought on by stress. Despite the fact that a local mortician was contacted and asked to provide several child-sized coffins for remains of bodies, the government’s explanation remains unchanged.

Fast Forward to the Present

Sightings, crashes, recovered bodies, over and over and over. After all the testimony and evidence, the official government explanation of UFOs remains the same - balloons, swamp gas, weather phenomena, hallucinations, hoaxes and downright lies. One day, the truth will come out. Some of us will still be around to see it, and those of us who aren't, already know the truth. So HAPPY UFO DAY!!!